But today, Wen Jiajia planned to fry it with eggs, which is also very delicious.

After washing the hibiscus, she picked the petals and put them in the egg mixture. She then poured the egg mixture into hot oil. The fried egg yolk had a hint of pink and looked good.

The last dish was the fish head pancake.

The fish head was braised, and Wen Jiajia added an extra spoonful of sauce.

The sauce is soybean paste. It is the authentic soybean paste made by Sister Bao. It has a mellow and fragrant taste. Even Haitian^[1]refers to a product made in Haiti or by Haitians. made decades later cannot compare to it.

When it comes to food, living in a staff dormitory is especially good, as you can taste food from all over the world.

After the fish head was cooked, Wen Jiajia also added some green onions and celery.

Wen Jiajia believed that she hated coriander because it was in her genes. She was a coriander lover in her previous life, but she couldn’t eat it in this life!

The kind that makes you feel sick the moment you eat it.

No wonder she didn’t think of planting coriander after she traveled through time. She planted onions, celery, and even ginger, but not coriander. It was not until she came here that she remembered coriander. It turned out that the original owner’s body instinctively hated coriander.

Wen Jiajia put the frying pan on the small stove. The frying pan was just big enough to hold the fish head and the broth.

There was a charcoal fire in the stove, so you could cook while eating, similar to grilling fish.

“It’s time for dinner!” Wen Jiajia shouted out the window.

It seemed that Wei Dai had gone out to chop wood, and he just happened to come back with two loads of firewood, not much, only about seventy or eighty kilograms.

Wen Jiajia carefully carried the stove to the small table beside the dining table and asked Wei Dai, “Has the logistics department agreed to let people go to Beishan to chop firewood?”

Wei Dai washed his hands and walked in: “He still won’t give in. I picked this from Xiao Fei’s house. I’ll go to the army to chop it this afternoon and give it back to him.”

Wen Jiajia: “…then why bother?”

Wei Dai was speechless. “Look outside the window. There is no firewood left. There are only two sticks of firewood left in the kitchen. Is it enough for cooking in the evening?”

It’s really not enough! Wen Jiajia smiled to ease the embarrassment.

“Eat, eat,” she said.

The fish head was really fragrant. Wen Jiajia was worried that the taste would be a bit abrupt after adding the sauce. Who knew that the combination of the sauce and the fish flavor would be quite good, and the soup was even more fresh and fragrant.

Wen Jiajia only filled half a bowl of rice, then scooped a spoonful of mashed eggplant and mixed it with the rice, saying, “It tastes good this way.”

Wen Xuan trusted her aunt very much and learned to eat like her.

Wen Chun, on the other hand, still had some requirements for the presentation of dishes. She felt that this mashed eggplant with a bit of brown color was a dark dish no matter how she looked at it.

It was not until Wen Xuan took a few big mouthfuls of rice that she believed that mashed eggplant was really delicious.

The fish head pancake was even better than the mashed eggplant.

Wen Jiajia dipped the still crispy pancake into the gurgling fish soup, boiled it, and soaked it before picking it up.

When you put it in your mouth, the aroma of green onion and fish soup blooms on the tip of your tongue. Although it has soup, you can still taste the crispness of the pancake.

“Oh my god, it’s even better than pickled fish!”

As soon as Wen Xuan took a bite of the fish head pancake, her eyes widened, and her two chubby legs dangling under the table swayed in pleasure.

Come on, Wen Jiajia thought, you just love new things!

I have eaten pickled fish at home many times, but this is the first time I have made fish head pancakes. After eating it a few more times, you will feel that it is just average.

Wei Dai ate half of it and suddenly asked Wen Jiajia with a half-smile, “Why don’t you put coriander in it?”

Wen Jiajia rolled her eyes and said, “You did it on purpose. Even a giant like that can’t stop you from talking.”

Last time she added coriander to the soup, she vomited. She saw the shock in Wei Dai’s eyes, and she always felt that Wei Dai seemed to have guessed something.

But what could she say about this? Could she say that she was a person from decades later? That her soul accepted coriander, but her body could not resist it? That was too absurd.

—

After dinner, Wei Dai went out, while Wen Jiajia blanched the bones, cleaned them, and stewed them in a casserole.

The sun was scorching, and it felt a bit like summer. After staying outside in the sun for a while, her face started to feel hot.

She knocked on the thick cotton-padded jacket and quilt with a wooden stick, causing dust to float out of the cotton and fly in the air.

The thick cotton-padded jackets and quilts were clearly placed in the closet, which was rarely opened, so she had no idea where all the dust came from.

The cotton-padded jacket and quilt became extremely soft after being beaten. She lowered her head and took a deep breath, which was filled with the scent of the sun.

After beating the clothes and quilts, she returned to the living room, where the two children were fiddling with the radio.

Wen Jiajia said, “Don’t press the buttons randomly, or you’ll break the radio.” She didn’t know how to repair this thing.

Wen Chun pouted, “Aunt, you look down on me, but I can press it. I have pressed it many times at Xiao Yi’s house.”

She pressed the button twice, and there were two “sizzling” sounds, followed by a clear sound coming from the radio.

“Oh, you really can!” Wen Jiajia gave Wen Chun a thumbs up. “Auntie can’t do that.”

Wen Chun raised her head proudly and pressed a few more buttons, and the original news channel instantly jumped to the story channel.

“Aunt, come and listen to the story. It’s about the Three Kingdoms,” she called out to Wen Jiajia excitedly.

Wen Jiajia ignored her, wanting to clean up the kitchen while the weather was good. She said, “It’s so loud, I can hear it in the kitchen.”

Wen Chun didn’t mind. She sat there obediently, supporting her head with her hands, and listened to the story attentively.

It really was a story of the Three Kingdoms. Wen Jiajia didn’t expect to hear it on the radio.

She moved all the pots, pans, and utensils in the kitchen outside, then boiled some water and washed the wall next to the stove twice with the hot water.

People in those days were short of oil, and although her family was better off, their oil consumption was still less than that of most families decades later.

Therefore, there were not many oil stains on the wall next to the stove.

The stove was covered with tiles, and she would wipe it after cooking every day, so there wasn’t much dust.

After cleaning the cabinets, stoves, and other places, she could sweep the floor.

This time, she even checked the spaces under the cupboards and behind the rice jar. She actually swept out a dried cockroach corpse that had been dead for who knows how long.

“Huh!”

Wen Jiajia curled her lips in disgust. This thing gave her a headache whenever she saw it, but she just couldn’t kill it completely.

She saw this thing in the summer and ran to the hospital that day to ask if there was any medicine to kill cockroaches.

There was no such medicine in the hospital. Wen Jiajia had no choice but to ride her bike to a pharmacy in the city to ask.

The pharmacy also didn’t have any medicine, but they gave her a folk remedy—mashed potatoes with boric acid.

She had potatoes and knew where to find boric acid!

Boric acid is abundant in pharmaceutical factories. The price of this stuff is quite low because the local chemical factories produce it. Brother factories support each other. Wen Jiajia once went there with Director Xue.

However, boric acid from pharmaceutical factories is controlled and cannot be taken out, but boric acid from chemical plants can be taken out.

So Wen Jiajia went back to the factory and asked Team Leader Wei to ask his friend at the chemical factory for two spoonfuls of boric acid. After returning home, she steamed two potatoes, mashed them into mashed potatoes, added boric acid, kneaded them into small balls, and placed them in corners of the kitchen and living room where cockroaches were likely to appear.

But what can I say… I can’t be sure whether it was very useful because she only saw two small dead cockroaches at home at that time, and the big cockroaches would still crawl around.

Wen Jiajia later tried the method of adding baking soda and sugar, and the method of soapy water, but still failed to kill the cockroaches.

In the end, as the weather got colder, the cockroaches disappeared on their own and her house was finally free of them.

When she saw the dead cockroach this time, the long-lost feeling of nausea^[2]is a feeling of discomfort or queasiness in the stomach that often precedes the urge to vomit. came over her again. She quickly picked it up and threw it outside the yard, burying it in the mud as fertilizer. She felt that throwing it into the water would pollute it.

The cleaning was done by 2 o’clock, and the kitchen looked brand new.

Wen Chun and Wen Xuan also listened to the radio until two o’clock. The two children, who usually took a nap, were particularly energetic at this moment. Wen Jiajia listened carefully while washing her hands. At this moment, the radio was talking about the Battle of Red Cliffs.

It is foreseeable that the story on the radio will probably be the background music in the home from now on.

After listening for a few years, the two children will have a lot of strange stories even before they start primary school.

Wen Jiajia considered herself a very open-minded parent and did not forbid her children from listening to the radio.

After all, the radio is not a mobile phone or computer and will not have any impact on vision.

But she would not allow them to listen to it for hours on end, to the point of being so absorbed in it that they would lose their appetite.

So Wen Jiajia also sat aside and listened with great interest. After the story about the Battle of Red Cliffs was over, she turned off the radio and said, “Okay, there’s no sun in the yard anymore. Let’s go out and exercise.”

“Oh, Auntie!” Wen Chun fell beside Wen Jiajia, hugged her arms, and twisted them hard, “Just a little longer.”

Wen Jiajia pushed her head away. “It’s no use acting cute. Go out and exercise. You’ve been listening to it for three hours. It’s time to give the radio a rest. Anyway, the ones you didn’t finish today will be played tomorrow, so you can listen to them then.”

Wen Chun wanted to say something, but when she saw the stern look in Wen Jiajia’s eyes, she didn’t dare speak anymore.

“Go out for a run,” Wen Jiajia patted her butt. “If you have nothing to do, go dig earthworms for the chickens. It will be even colder in a while, and you won’t be able to find earthworms even if you want to.”

She drove the two children out, and Wen Jiajia went to collect the clothes.

After putting away the clothes and quilts, Wei Dai just came back.

“Have you finished chopping wood?” Wen Jiajia asked. “It seems that Xie Yang from next door also went to chop wood after you left.”

Wei Dai carried two loads of firewood to the small shed outside the kitchen, then went to the living room and gulped down two cups of water, saying, “Today, the logistics department organized the people living in the bungalows to go chop firewood and bring it back with donkey carts. There are still several loads outside.”

Wen Jiajia asked him, “Do you want me to help?”

Wei Dai shook his head and went out again. “It’s dirty. Just stay at home.”

“Okay.” Wen Jiajia sorted out the two loads of firewood he had just brought back.

The firewood was placed next to the back door of the kitchen, covered by a small shed so that it wouldn’t get wet unless it rained heavily.

Wei Dai carried seven or eight loads of firewood into the yard, and the pile became higher and higher.

Finally, the shed was almost full, so he put the last two loads of firewood in the utility room. Looking at the full loads of firewood, the couple felt safe.

There is no way, hoarding firewood is an instinct engraved in the DNA of rural people. As winter approaches, having enough firewood is essential for a sense of security.